Magpie
by little miss dracula
Summary: The Doctor and Rose are pulled out of orbit and into the seemingly mundane world of Oxford University. Meanwhile, Daisy Trinder, an exceptionally bright early entrance student, just wants to get on with her research, but the noises in her head just keep getting louder.
1. Chapter 1

**_This is my first fanfic for a very long time. I'm hoping to get back into it now I'm less busy :) Hope you enjoy, and I promise to update as soon as Chapter 2 is ready!  
Note: I freely admit to knowing absolutely nothing about Oxford University. I went there for an interview and was turned down, so yeah xD I have therefore taken complete artistic license with it's layout, it's policy on early entrance students and how it generally works, but since it's a fanfiction and therefore by definition not true, I'm sure none of you will mind xD_**

Reviews and concrit are encouraged and welcomed

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. The Doctor and related characters and trademarks all belong to the BBC.

Oh, this story will also contain some 10/Rose a little later on *^-^*

Enjoy, Reader.

L_M_D

_Chapter One - Crash Landing_

Tuesday. Forget Thursdays, it was Tuesdays that the Doctor could never get the hang of. He was sat in the Control Room of the TARDIS, which was orbiting around a supernova. Rose sat on a seat opposite him, long tanned legs in shorts that the Doctor was sure were worn just to distract him.

Suddenly, the image of lazy relaxation exploded with an almighty bang. The TARDIS began to fly, and no matter what he did, the Doctor couldn't make it go off track, or even work out where they were going.

"What was that?!" Rose yelled.

The Doctor peered over the top of his glasses and muttered

"I'm not sure. Seemed like…" He was cut off as both he and Rose were flung to the ground.

"Seemed like what?"

"We're being pulled in somewhere. Something needs our help."

It was a perfectly ordinary day when Daisy Trinder left class and walked towards the library. Initially, her thoughts were occupied by the thought of the imminent pleasure of isolating herself with one of the University's manuscripts.

The ordinary beauty of the day, was interrupted, however, when Daisy noticed a large, blue box stood in the middle of the walkway.

'Student pranks.' She thought to herself. 'When will they stop?'

She surveyed the box. A police box. She briefly wondered where they had got it. Perhaps it was a prop. The theatre nerds were always pulling pranks to advertise their latest play. She knocked on the box, assuming it was manned by one of the committee members.

"Jack? Jack is this you? It's Daisy. Daisy Trinder, from the Gazette? If you like I'll do an interview about the play but you need to move this box. It's an obstruction."

Her conviction wavered slightly when a man in a long brown coat and a girl that looked like a postgrad student stepped out looking slightly worse for wear.

"What play is that then?" The man inquired of her.

"Well you should know, since this is clearly a prop. And I'm afraid you're going to have to move it, it's in the way of the students."

"Ah. So it is. Sorry about that, I'll get that sorted… "

Rose looked at the young girl. Clearly a University student, but not the sort she'd have initially thought of. She looked young in the face, and overly serious. Too studious to be a student.

"So, if you aren't actors, who exactly are you?"

The Doctor held out his psychic paper.

"I'm Doctor Smith, this is Ms. Tyler. We're visiting research fellows."

"Then what are you doing in the box?"

"Weird, people never usually notice it." The Doctor said to himself looking curious studying the girls face more intensely. "We got a little lost. Were exactly are we?"

"Well at the moment you're smack bam in the middle of Maudlin College, Oxford and you're in my way."

"Oxford. Right. Okay then. Yes, sorry, please carry on."

"Thank you."

The girl barged passed them and began once more to head to the library.

The Doctor offered Rose his arm and the two began to wander around the college's famous grounds.

"So what pulled us here?" Rose questioned the Doctor.

"I'm not sure." He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and did a scan of the surrounding area. "Nothing is coming up. The TARDIS didn't recognise any alien life."

"So, Oxford University, eh?"

He smiled at the girl on his arm. "Indeed. Passed many a pleasant summer here."

"You went to Oxford University?" Rose looked at him, shocked.

"900 years of time and space. Course I did!"

"So what do you do when you're stuck in Oxford with no aliens to fight and no one to rescue?"

"Oh someone needs rescuing Rose. I just don't know what from."

"So what do we do?"

The Doctor thought for a moment.

"We find out of course."

"We're going to a library aren't we." Rose sighed. Libraries weren't her thing.

The Doctor just grinned at her.


	2. One for Sorrow, Two for joy

The Doctor and Rose backtracked and headed the same way Daisy had just a few moments earlier.

Entering the old building they were immediately accosted by someone Rose took to be the librarian.

"Who are you? The Library is off limits to visitors and tourists I'm afraid," she screeched, glaring at them over the top of bifocal glasses.

"Oh we're um, research fellows…" Rose began their cover story when the old woman interrupted her

"I haven't been told about any research fellows. The University has a very strict policy on who can come and when, and I'm always informed!" The woman looked nearly out of her mind when a small but confident voice piped up from behind her

"It's okay, Agatha. I've seen their documentation."

Agatha the librarian span around, then visibly relaxed when she saw Daisy standing there, an oversized volume in her arms. Rose couldn't help but notice how much more serious she looked, even more so than before, her hair scraped back and a pair of round framed black glasses perched on her nose.

"Oh, Daisy. It's just that it's most unusual for research fellows to come to the library on a Saturday, and without me being warned of them…"

They'd landed on a Saturday then, the Doctor and Rose thought simultaneously. Rose would never get used to the jumping around in time. The Doctor was just glad he'd skipped another Tuesday.

"Hang on, Saturday?" Rose crinkled her nose in confusion. Not that the Doctor noticed it. Or the slight hair toss that accompanied it. He coughed slightly.

"Yes, I'm Doctor Smith and this is Ms. Tyler. We're from…"

"Nottingham." Daisy supplied for him, looking at him, he could have sworn, with a knowing look in her eye. "Listen, put them under my name if you have to."

"Right. Okay…" Agatha, looking severely disconcerted, bustled off back behind her desk.

Daisy began to walk away. Rose hurried after her, allowing the Doctor to become severely disconcerted with the image of her –ahem– shorts.

"Wait. Daisy is it?"

"Yes." She looked at the blonde girl in confusion, wondering why she was following her.

"It's just… it's a Saturday afternoon. Shouldn't you be out, like, asleep or something? Not in the library?"

Daisy stopped dead in her tracks and looked directly at Rose.

"You're in the library too."

"Yeah, well, that's only because of nerdy over here." She thumbed towards the Doctor, who was catching up with them.

"I resent that!" he smiled at her.

Daisy rolled her eyes in exasperation at the both of them, and continued to head towards the basement of the library, the Special Collections suite. To her annoyance, the chav girl and her vaguely tolerable boyfriend followed her.

"But Rose has a point. Not only is it Saturday, but by my calculations, it should be your Easter break around now, shouldn't it."

Daisy remained silent for a moment as she took a pair of white silk gloves from a box, put them on, and headed for one of the manuscripts. Gingerly, she took it from the shelf, and laid it delicately on a cloth covered table.

"This," she replied, in almost a whisper "Is the Cotton Vitellius manuscript. It contains the only remaining manuscript of the most important Old English text in the world, Beowulf. It belongs to the British Library but they've had it temporarily moved here so I can conduct my research on patriarchal coding in language. Yes, it's the holidays. But what language student could resist looking at this?" She gestured to the page in front of her, which the Doctor was already inspecting.

"It is fantastic. It's beautiful." He grinned up at the student in front of him. "And they moved this here for you? You must be something special, to get them to spend that much."

"Nothing overly important, just passionate about language and good at persuading people."

"So you're giving up on a gorgeous day like this, to sit in the basement and look at dusty old books?" Rose still didn't quite grasp what the girl could possibly find that interesting about some old words that didn't even look like English.

The girl glared up at her, taking in her denim shorts and pink hoodie.

"I don't expect you to understand…" She touched her forehead as though in pain. "Sorry, I don't know where that came from. But yes, I love languages. In any case, I aim to speak as many fluently as I can."

"How many can you speak fluently?" Rose challenged, somewhat ruffled by the insult, despite Daisy's immediate retraction.

"English, obviously, and French, Spanish, German, Italian, Afrikaans, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese."

"And how old are you?" The Doctor had peered over the top of his glasses at her.

"Twenty. I'm in my second year, but I was an early entrance applicant."

"Oxford doesn't take early entrance applicants."

Daisy smiled for one of the first times that day and Rose noticed a pretty girl underneath the seriousness. She wondered if the Doctor had also seen, and worried. Daisy was smart. Incredibly, stupidly, Doctor smart. And pretty, too, no doubt, if she relaxed. What if she was more the Doctor's kind of girl than she was? Rose felt an unwelcome sense of dislike and then immediately banished it to the back of her mind.

"They allowed a temporary change in the rules. It's just for me."

"So you like, study languages?" Rose queried, peering over the manuscript in an attempt to convince both the Doctor and Daisy that she knew exactly what they were looking at.

"Well, I study English language. The others I do sort of on the side. I'm currently learning to read Arabic and speak Greek."

"What are you, some kind of genius?" Rose snorted.

"Yes."

"Well, modesty will get you nowhere, love." Rose turned to the Doctor for back up, only to see him still gazing intently at Daisy.

"I was accepted into MENSA when I was thirteen with an IQ of 187. It hasn't diminished with age. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm not being modest. But it's true."

"Right…"

"Anyway." Daisy suddenly stood up straight and looked at the Doctor and Rose even more sternly than before. "When precisely where you going to tell me who you actually are?"

The Doctor and Rose glanced at each other, worried.

"Your paper wasn't documentation from any kind of University, let alone Nottingham."

"R..really?" The Doctor pulled out the psychic paper and stared at it for a while. "What…um… what did it say?"

Daisy glanced at Rose, who was looking nervously at the Doctor.

"It said something you clearly can't say out loud. And I'm not going to say it for you."

Rose immediately turned to Daisy, not daring to wonder.

"What did it say?"

"Ask him that, not me. You're right to be scared of words, Doctor _'Smith'._ Words are the most powerful thing that this world has. And the most dangerous. But, I believe, you shouldn't be scared of those words. Not this time, anyway."

Daisy began to intensely scrutinise the manuscript in front of her, isolating herself from the sentimental scene no doubt about to emerge in front of her, and from the throbbing pain just behind her eyes that had started up again.

The Doctor looked at Rose, who looked inquiringly back at him.

"What did it say? Doctor? What did it say?"

The Doctor twitched his collar and scratched his face before replying.

"It…um… I… Well, you see… Rose… Rose… I um… It's just… well…Silly thing, psychic paper, it can always…um… Rose I l…"

Unfortunately, just as the Doctor was on the brink of spitting out the psychic paper's message, the pain in Daisy Trinder's head reached breaking point. She screamed in pain, and when the Doctor and Rose looked round in shock, she was slumped over her precious manuscript.

She had blacked out.


	3. Seven for a secret

**Apologies for the slightly delayed update :) Anyway, this is chapter three, dedicated to the lovely people who are following this story :) You're all amazing and I hope you enjoy.**

**Anyway, chapter three - In which the Doctor has an idea :) **

"Oh my God!" Rose screamed as she ran around the table to check on the slumped over girl. The Doctor immediately began to scan her with his sonic screwdriver, pausing a moment in confusion.

Rose noticed and looked up at him.

"What is it? Doctor what's wrong with her?"

"I don't know." He frowned at his sonic screwdriver and scanned her again. "There's something wrong with her brain… something…" Just as he reached her head with the scan she sat up immediately.

Clasping her head in her hands she mumbled

"What happened?"

Rose put an arm around her and began to ask her if she was okay. Usually resistant to any kind of kindness, Daisy was so confused she allowed it to happen.

"Doctor, what's wrong with her?" Rose repeated her question to the man stood alternating between staring at the sonic screwdriver and staring at the fragile looking girl in Rose's arms. At the mention of the Doctor Daisy began to stare at him.

"Doctor… what kind of doctor are you?"

"I'm um… a doctor in… well all sorts really."

"You don't look like a doctor."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far. I think I can pull off medical student."

"No. There's too much darkness around you to be a doctor. Not a real doctor. Not one of our doctors." Daisy put her head back in her hands. "I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm saying…. It's my head."

She sucked in a breath of air, trying to control the pain beginning to throb across her eyes. Rose held her closer and Daisy flopped her head forward. The Doctor knelt in front of the two girls, for once not distracted (well, not completely distracted) by the closeness of Rose's legs. He gently turned Daisy's head towards him and looked into her eyes.

"What's wrong with you?" he muttered. "There's something in your head… What is it?"

Suddenly, Daisy began to speak. Not to the Doctor, nor even to Rose but she began to speak. Beginning with Act 1 Scene 1 of Henry VI part 2, she began to mutter her way through the play.

"Doctor what is she saying?"

"Henry VI part one. The first play written by Shakespeare… But why? Daisy? Daisy Trinder? Can you hear me?"

Daisy snapped out of it just as she entered scene 2.

"What's the matter?" She asked, curious as to why this strange man was peering at her over the top of his glasses and his even stranger girlfriend was… _hugging_ her? "What happened?"

"I think we need to leave the library." The Doctor stood up, his serious look plastered on his face.

The three of them headed for the nearest teashop, Daisy still somewhat confused as to how she'd suddenly got two bodyguards following her around. The girls sat down and the Doctor ordered a strong tea for the pale girl, still looking fragile from her _fit_.

He brought the tea over and sat next to Rose, trying to hide his smile as they were pressed together in the uncomfortably small sofa. Daisy sat opposite them, silently sipping on the tea.

"How long have you had these headaches Daisy?" The Doctor began the conversation after allowing her to be quiet for a few moments.

Daisy knew that she shouldn't trust this man. She knew that he was full of secrets and darkness. She could tell when she looked into his eyes. But she could also tell that he cared. Not just for his Rose, but for her. And no one had ever cared for Daisy Trinder in her life.

"When I was two. It's my earliest memory, the pain in my head."

"But they've been getting worse?"

"Yes. They're getting so much worse. Stronger."

The Doctor crinkled his forehead at her choice of words.

"What where you like as a child, Daisy?"

"I can't say I know an awful lot. I was in a care home. Not a very good one. My parents died when I was a baby. I was pretty normal until I was about two. Then apparently I just sort of… sped up."

"Sped up?" Rose interjected, still somewhat concerned over the Doctor's attention to the frail thing in front of them.

"Mentally. I started to develop at more than twice the normal rate for a child. By the time I was six, I was ready for A-Level work."

"What, in everything?" The Doctor looked incredulous. No human, no silly ape, could pick things up that quickly. There was something wrong with her brain.

"No, not everything. Maths I couldn't get until I was about ten, after I read a load of books on it. Languages were my particular interest. Always has been."

The Doctor, for once was stumped. Rose looked out the window, people watching whilst her thoughts raced.

"Oh look, magpies! Seven of them as well. Seven for a secret never to be told!" She smiled at the old saying.

"Seven for a secret?" The Doctor looked at her, stumped. "Seven of what?"

"Magpies!" Rose grinned. "Don't you know the old saying?"

"Rose, I know an infinite number of things. Just not which one you're referring to."

"The magpie song, silly. One for sorrow, two for joy…" She began. Daisy joined in and they finished the verse together.

"Three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold and seven for a secret never to be told."

Rose laughed and even Daisy giggled, until that is they saw the Doctor's face. He was staring intently at the black and white birds on the ground. He turned to face Daisy, staring so deep into her eyes Daisy thought he might be able to see her soul.

"Magpies."


	4. Chapter 4

**Hello all :) Again, a slightly delayed update. Apparently I have to do work to get my degree. Who knew? Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter :)**

In no time at all the Doctor had grabbed Daisy and raced towards the TARDIS, leaving a disgruntled Rose to run and catch up. When they reached the outside, the Doctor spared no time in gesturing for the young girl to go inside, which she did with only a slight hesitation. Rose caught up, shutting the door behind her when she too reached the TARDIS. She was so wrapped up in the Doctor's 100 mile per hour jabbering that she quite forgot to check out the face of the young human that they had brought onto the alien ship, quite casually, as though it were an everyday occurrence to find a spaceship disguised as a small blue box in the middle of Oxford University.

"Magpies, you see… Magpies!" The Doctor grinned unabashedly at Rose, also forgetting the consequences of his actions. "Magpies, they love shiny things. Shiny, pretty things. And then they steal them. And our young Miss Trinder here, with a mind like hers, well, anybody would be tempted."

Pouting at the Doctor's obvious admiration for Daisy's extraordinary intelligence, Rose turned to look at the girl for the first time since entering the TARDIS. Upon doing so, without turning back to the Doctor she tugged at his coat sleeve.

"Um… Doctor? I think… we might have a tiny problem."

The Doctor turned around, pushing his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose as he did so.

Daisy was staring at him. Not in the usual, overawed way that people usually did when they saw the inside of his frankly magnificent ship, and not even in the way he had occasionally thought he saw Rose staring at him. She looked manic. More than that. Hungry. Desperately hungry. Desperate and manic and altogether _not human._

"Daisy?" he asked cautiously.

"Daisy is no longer present." Insisted a raspy and yet oddly metallic sounding voice.

"What do you mean?"

"Daisy is no longer present."

"Yes, but what does that mean?"

"Daisy is no longer present."

"Oh my God, what have they done to her? Doctor?" Rose muttered under her breath to a shrugging Doctor.

"Okay, then who am I talking to?" He thrust his hands in his pockets and looked determinedly at 'Daisy'.

"I am the last of my species, the last of my kind. I am the Picarion."

"Never heard of you." The Doctor looked somewhat confused. "Why are you on this planet."

"You wouldn't have heard of us, _Doctor._ But I have heard of you, oh yes. Lonely Time Lord, lost in his box, with his girlfriend by his side, tragically mortal."

"She is not my… How do you know that?"

"You scanned the Vessel's body. I intercepted and sent the wave to you."

"You can't have done. I'd have noticed."

"But I can. I did. Now all of your secrets are stored in this human brain."

"It'll implode."

"Only if I leave. This body is my host, I am resting in its brain. Without me the things she knows would make her fry."

"You, Picar-whatever. You need to get out of her, right now." Rose interjected, feeling an unexpected wave of pity for the thin little body in front of her.

"Oh, but I can't. You see, this girl, my host and Vessel, she is so very clever. So very, very clever. The most clever ape on this planet. Her mind is almost as wonderful as yours, Doctor. But I have made her greater. I have fused her mind into the most perfect machine, capable of storing vast tracts of language, of knowledge, of power. So you see, I don't want to leave." The voice paused, momentarily to look at the pair in front of him. The silly human and the deluded God. "You think you can force me to leave? There's the rub. You see, it's like I said. I have made this body great. You really think a human child can hold the amount of information I have given her, the amount of information stored in her brain, information she barely knows that she has possession of? Should I leave this body, and allow it to die? Would you murder this girl, in order to murder me?"


	5. I'll tell her

**Apologies once more for the wait xD However, this is a slightly longer chapter than last time so I hope it makes up for it. Also, there's a bit more 10/Rose fluff coming up in this xD Enjoy...**

Daisy's crumpled figure hit the floor with an unnecessarily loud bang.

The Picarion had spent the better part of half an hour controlling Daisy's mind before the Doctor began to notice something subtly different in its mannerisms. When the Picarion had full control over Daisy's body, she was more upright, more formal in her mannerisms though more colloquial in her speech. About twenty minutes into the Doctor's conversation with the Picarion, he could see it fighting to keep to its own speech pattern, fighting to hold itself upright. Daisy was pushing through.

"Yes, come on Daisy!" He had exclaimed, much to the Picarion's annoyance.

"Come on Daisy, fight him!" Rose had joined in the encouragement.

It took them a few minutes of combined reassurance but eventually Daisy won. She took one look at the Doctor and Rose, stood in front of the control panel of the spaceship disguised as a blue box in the middle of Oxford University, and fainted.

"I can tell you one thing, Daisy Trinder. I don't think I've had a fainter before." The Doctor smiled at the girl, currently sitting, slightly overawed, on one of the seats in the control room as Rose brought them all a cup of tea.

"There ya go. Milky, three sugars." She placed the purple mug in Daisy's hand. "Mind you, I don't know how you can have all that sugar. Blergh." She made a face at the idea of all that sweetness.

"I've always loved sugar. In everything. I used to drive the women at the care home mad, making sugar sandwiches and living on cakes." Daisy grinned, somewhat awkwardly.

The Doctor leaned against the control panel, his face growing serious.

"How much do you remember?" He asked as Rose seated herself next to Daisy and stretched out her legs, unintentionally making both of the Doctor's hearts pick up speed. Daisy's smile faded.

"Not much. Everything is black from the moment I stepped into here." She sipped her steaming hot tea. "Then I remember hearing your voice. Telling it to get out of me." She looked at Rose gratefully. "And I realised there was something in my head."

She looked at the Doctor for confirmation and he nodded. "The Picarion."

"The Picarion, right. And so I just sort of, pulled him back."

"How?" Rose interjected.

"I don't really know. I'm sorry I'm not being very helpful."

"Oh no, it's fine Daisy. Don't worry, the Doctor will think of something, won't you?"

The Doctor nodded.

"What is it?" Daisy asked him. "The thing in my head, the Picarion. What is it?"

The Doctor glanced at Rose, wondering if the girl could handle the truth. He looked at her, small and frail and scared. And brave. And smart. Stupidly, wonderfully smart. She stared back at him, her large eyes intensified by the round glasses she still wore. And he decided she could.

"It's an alien." He paused. She simply nodded. "It's called a Picarion. Apparently the last of its species. They prey on planets by taking up residence in their brains, by gaining total knowledge of their language, and using it to take over, to conquer the whole planet."

"That's why it chose you." Rose took up when the Doctor stopped. "Because you're so smart."

"How long has it been there?" Daisy looked suitably disconcerted.

"Since you were about two years old. That's where the headaches are coming from. It's exerting enormous amounts of pressure on your brain."

"Is it possible to get it out?"

"I don't know."

"If we could…If you could… get it out… Would I still be smart?"

The Doctor crinkled his brow. That wasn't the question he had been expecting.

"I… I should think so…"

"Then I want it out."

"Daisy, taking that thing out of your head could kill you."

"That's a risk I'm prepared to take."

"And the only thing worrying you is if you'll still be a genius?" Rose questioned, concerned now for Daisy's mental state.

"What else do I have to care about?" Daisy shifted in her seat to the girl who, despite manifold dissimilarities, she had come to actually like a little.

"I don't know. Friends? Boyfriend?"

Daisy laughed. A genuine laugh, which disturbed Rose somewhat.

"I've never had any."

"What? Boyfriends? That's alright, my mate Shareen knows a girl who didn't kiss anyone until she was twenty."

"No. Well, I mean yes I haven't had a boyfriend. But I meant friends. I've never really had friends."

Rose almost dropped her tea as she pondered the idea without living a) without men and b) without mates.

The Doctor felt a tug on all of his heartstrings. He knew what it was like to be as lonely as that. Until Rose. He looked at his blonde companion as she spoke in hushed tones to Daisy. Quite possibly his only true friend in the Universe. And, loath as he was to admit it to himself, quite possibly… just maybe… there was the smallest of chances… that she… that Rose Tyler… was the love of his exceptionally long life. His heart flipped as the thought he had forbidden himself from thinking crossed his mind. He turned around and started fiddling with things on the console to try and distract him from thinking the impossible. Such a thing was impossible.

_You're right to be afraid of words, Doctor "Smith". _Daisy had said as much to him. Words were dangerous, those words even more so. They would change everything, change the amazing friendship he and Rose had established. _But, I believe, you shouldn't be scared of those words. Not this time, anyway. _But she had told him that too. That maybe, just possibly, there was a chance that….

The Doctor turned around to face the two girls. Rose had her arm around Daisy, and on noticing the Doctor's movement, turned her face towards him and smiled warmly.

'If I can get that thing out of Daisy,' The Doctor thought, smiling at the two of them, who had continued their conversation. 'If I can get that thing out of her, I'll tell Rose. I'll tell her everything.'


	6. Chapter 6

**We're nearing the end now, but not to worry, I have another plot bunny just ready to take over my life :)**

"You can do something, can't you Doctor?" He was standing at the control panel of the TARDIS, doing the Time Lord equivalent of Googling the Picarion.

"I think so. I don't know. I've never heard of these guys before. I don't know what they need."

"You said they were like Magpies, right?"

"Yeah, grabbing onto the shiniest brain and strapping themselves in."

Rose bit her lip.

"I need to talk to it again." The Doctor suddenly decided. He strode over to Daisy, who was eagerly reading some literature from the 30th century from the TARDIS library. "Daisy?" he interrupted.

She looked up at him, all traces of seriousness gone as she clutched the book to her chest.

"I need to talk to the Picarion. I need you to let it take control of you again."

Daisy's expression changed to one of worry.

"How?" she asked. "I don't know how."

"Is your head aching?" the Doctor asked.

"Only a little."

"Okay. Concentrate on the pain. Really focus on it. Close your eyes and let the pain spread."

Daisy hesitated, but did so. After just a few moments she slumped forward, blacked out from the pressure. The Doctor caught her as she did so and propped her up against the chair. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at her forehead.

"What are you?" he muttered to himself.

At the sound of the Doctor's voice, Daisy sat up straight, the Picarion visible in her eyes.

"I thought you'd come back." the voice smiled through Daisy.

"What are you? And how come I've never heard of you. I've heard of everything."

"So modest, Doctor." the Picarion mocked. "I suspect the great and powerful Time Lord has never heard of us simply because we are too lowly for him to notice. Whilst you travel around in your box, your... TARDIS, we have infiltrated this planet, the planet of your favourite little ape."

"Excuse me..." Rose began to interrupt before she was silenced by one look from the Picarion.

"Ape. Silly little ape, thinking you know so much because you have travelled the universe, with your precious lover. You know nothing."

"Leave her alone." the Doctor warned in his most menacingly quiet voice.

"Oh isn't this sweet. Trying to protect her when you know in your heart you cannot."

"Oh I can protect her. Especially against you."

"You barely know us."

"You keep saying that. Us. And we." Rose began, trying to avoid looking directly at Daisy's possessed body. "But you said you're the last. That there aren't any of you left. You're on your own."

"I am the last of my kind. My race was destroyed many years ago. But I have my Host, this clever, clever girl."

"Daisy?" The Doctor leaned closer to her, peering into the girls eyes. "Daisy I know you're in there, and I know you can hear me. I need you to do something for me. I need you to look into your own head. You can do it, so don't even try to say you can't. Use your brain to look at this thing. What is it? Find out whatever you can and then pull it back. Pull it back and tell me."

With some more ease than previously, Daisy subdued the Picarion and found herself back in control of your mind.

"Well, what did you see?" the Doctor questioned eagerly, having no doubt that the immense brain power that the Picarion had helped Daisy achieve would be its downfall. Combined with his own considerable intellect, they couldn't fail. And then he could tell Rose. That was his prize, and his fear.

"It's gaseous. It floats in the space between the hemispheres, seeping into both sides. It has carbon in it's make up. Carbon and hydrogen and something else. Something that I couldn't see. And there's a taste. It's sweet."

"Like sugar sandwiches and cake?" the Doctor suddenly questioned

"Yes... Now I think about it, precisely like that."

"That's what it's been using!" the Doctor grinned manically at both women. "Sugar!"

When both Rose and Daisy simply stared at him he launched into his characteristically exuberant explanation.

"The Picarion, it's using enormous amounts of energy to keep itself it its gaseous state and to stay in your head. It's been using sugar. It's brilliant. The sugars both keep it in a non-natural state, and give you the energy of... well... me, in order to do the absurd amount of studying you need to do for it to become powerful enough to take full control of you and, eventually, through you, the entire earth."

"So if she just doesn't eat sugar, she'll be okay."

"Well, yes technically. But there's an even quicker way. I think I might know how we can do this, with little damage to your brain Daisy."

"And then I can go back to my research."

"And you can go back to being wonderfully, incredibly, overly smart. But first, and most importantly, I'm going to need a lot of cake."


	7. You're mad, you do know that?

**The penultimate chapter! (Well, probably. We'll see how well the next one goes!) Hope you enjoy. **

**P.S. This chapter is best enjoyed with cake. A lot of cake xD**

**L_M_D**

Rose had spent worse ways destroying aliens. The Doctor, Daisy and her had split up. The Doctor and Rose had gone rushing around Oxford, buying up all the cake they could find. Daisy had initially headed off with them but had begun to relapse as the Picarion tried to take hold of her brain, to find out their plan and to stop them. Of her own volition she had locked herself in her rented flat, giving the only key to Rose. She reasoned that if she was taken possession of again, and if this time it took her fully and she couldn't control it, she'd at least buy them a little time. The Picarion was smart, but not strong. Brains over brawn after all. It would be a while until it could get out of her third floor bedroom. It would buy the Doctor some time.

Cold, craving sugar and not a little bit frightened, Daisy perched on the edge of her single, immaculately made bed. She stared at an indeterminate spot on the carpet.

Her entire world had been thrown into turmoil in the last few hours. She had gone from knowing almost everything there was to know, to being inside of an impossible spaceship. Told that what she knew was literally the tip of the iceberg, nothing in comparison the vastness of the universe. She glanced up at the windows, clouds smearing the perfect blueness of the sky. Nothing more than a scattering of light molecules. But pretty nonetheless.

And there was so much more beyond that. She'd known this already of course. She had taken extra classes in astrophysics and aerospace engineering. That was where she'd been this morning. Extracurricular classes about space. She'd been open to the idea of alien existence too. With an infinite number of suns and an infinite number of planets it was highly unlikely that humans were the only sentient beings in the universe. One of those planets had to be conducive to life in the same way Earth was. But then one of these aliens stepped out of a blue box right in front of her. He looked human. He sounded human. And yet there he was, completely and totally alien. It was enough to make her head spin a little.

Talking of heads, yet another one resided in her brain. Her intellect, which had always been her pride, sometimes a little too much so, it all, or nearly all, was down to the alien in her head. Child prodigy she was not. Possessed and pitiful, that was more like it. She just hoped that the Doctor would be able to fulfil his promise of removing the hostile being inside of her. And if and when he did, she would still have some sort of intelligence. She had nothing else. All her life had been engrossed in hungrily absorbing knowledge, now she knew for a malevolent purpose. Boys and friends had passed her by in a blur of words. Besides, men were usually too afraid to even talk to her. Something about an intelligent woman that seems to reduce them to mush.

Except the Doctor of course. But he was alien. And that was quite odd. And pretty old looking, and, she guessed, older inside. And also potentially taken by the chavvy blonde girl with the big heart. Quite the odd couple. Daisy smiled to herself briefly. I hope he tells her she thought. Her smile faded as her mind fought against the alien inside it.

The Doctor and Rose reconvened outside the block of flats, each of them balancing an absurd amount of cake boxes precariously in their arms. After some careful balancing, they managed to buzz Daisy's flat. Once inside, they lay all of the cakes onto the bed, the Doctor managing to bring out at least another five cupcakes from the pockets of his long overcoat.

"Bigger on the inside," he explained at the sight of Daisy's puzzled expression.

"Right. More interested in the absurd amount of cake, and what exactly it's for."

"That isn't the last of it! Have you got any sugar?"

"Of course, I have it in pretty much all of my food."

"Could you bring it here?"

Daisy left the room, leaving the Doctor and Rose in silence. Silence was usually comfortable between the two, but as they each perched on the bed, like bookends holding in the mass of cake, and Daisy seemed to take an inordinately long time to fetch sugar, the silence stretched out like a million rainy Sundays, or all the times he'd never said it.

Rose nibbled on her lip. The Doctor inhaled as though he was about to speak but said nothing. She glanced at him. He glanced at the same time. Both looked away. Rose stared at the same spot on the carpet Daisy had been staring at earlier. The Doctor stared into the middle distance, feeling the rotating of the world, edging slowly around the day.

Daisy broke the spell with an almighty clatter as nineteen bags of sugar that she carried dropped onto the floor. She stared at them for a moment, the remaining bag clutched in her arms. An already opened bag had poured its contents onto the floor, creating a small white snow heap on the regulation cream carpet.

For a moment there was silence, until Daisy let out a soft, belated

"Whoops." The entire company descended into nonsensical laughter, the absurd amount of sugar that Daisy owned sending Rose into hysterics.

For the Time Lord, time slowed as he saw Rose in his peripheral vision, her full lips spread widely, showing perfect teeth. He shook himself out of it, reminded himself of his promise.

When the girls finished their unprompted laughing fit, Daisy asked the Doctor precisely what his plan was.

"The Picarion, it's basically sugar. It's made of the stuff, and it feeds off it."

"So you're giving it a snack?" Rose questioned playfully, indicating the large number of cakes.

"No. Well. Yes, actually." the Doctor replied. "It's only keeping itself in a gaseous state through the use of sugar. So, we give it too much sugar, force it to become as thin as possible, then Daisy should just be able to, to put it simply, breathe it out. You'll be able to force it down from your brain, into your mouth, and out into the air."

"Won't it just go back into me?"

"No. Well, yes it would, but this is where I come in." He pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, brushed off a cake crumb. "As soon as you breathe it out, I turn it straight back into its solid form. Simple deposition. Setting number 312."

"You're mad, you do know that?" Daisy smiled at the Doctor's enthusiasm.

"Oh yes!"


	8. Eight for a wish

**The final chapter! Will the Doctor's plan work? And more importantly, will he say it?**

As Daisy tentatively bit into the final cupcake, some half an hour later, Rose turned to the Doctor.

"Is this going to work?" she whispered to him as he crouched poised in front of the girl, sonic screwdriver pointing directly at her face in preparation.

"I don't know." He admitted, not taking his eyes off Daisy. "But I hope so Rose. I really hope so."

"Doctor!" Daisy interrupted. "I can feel it. Oh wow that's weird, I can feel it in my head!"

"Breathe it out Daisy, force it down." He replied.

"Come on Daisy!" Rose shouted gleefully as the frail brunette closed her eyes in concentration, breathed deeply through her nose and exhaled, a silver gas emanating from her mouth as she did so. The Doctor reacted immediately, turning on the sonic screwdriver. The gas initially formed a small ball in front of the screwdriver, before forming into a tiny silver creature, shaped like a bird. It glared up at the Doctor with black eyes, unable to speak.

The Doctor grinned widely, as Daisy stared on, somewhat horrified.

"One Picarion. There you go Rose, something even I haven't seen."

"What will you do with it?" Daisy asked as Rose examined the being.

"Oh, I'll find somewhere for it. Somewhere safe. You'll be okay now, Daisy."

Daisy walked the Doctor and Rose back to the TARDIS, chattering away with the Doctor about space and time. When they reached the TARDIS, Rose looked at the Doctor, who smiled back. She turned to Daisy.

"You could come with us, if you wanted? See all that stuff you were talking about?"

Daisy looked at the Doctor, surprised. He nodded at her. Silence held for just a moment. Daisy was on the cusp of accepting when a loud shout echoed around the quad.

"Oi! Daisy? Is that you?"

Daisy glanced behind her briefly, turned back to the Doctor and Rose and groaned.

"Who's he then?" Rose smiled, nodding her head at the boy striding confidently towards them.

"Jack. He's the president of the theatre society. Always trying to get me to do an interview with him about the latest production. I'm part of the student newspaper." Daisy explained.

"He's cute!" Rose answered approvingly.

"He's ridiculous!" Daisy replied.

"Still cute!" Rose smiled at her.

"So what do you say, eh Daisy? We could see the stars together, us three." The Doctor smiled warmly at Rose.

"No. Thank you though." She replied, to both the Doctor and Rose's confusion. Daisy nodded at the two of them. "You two are cute together, I don't want to be a third wheel. Besides," she continued "I've had that thing in my head since I was two years old. I haven't lived here yet. And you're right." Daisy smiled at Rose. "He is quite cute."

"Well, good." The Doctor responded. "You enjoy life, Daisy Trinder."

"Goodbye, both of you. And Doctor, remember your promise to yourself." She grinned, before turning around to face the young man coming towards her. "Jack! How about I do that interview now? Over coffee?" The boy's face lit up, and they began to walk off together. Daisy turned around, smiling widely. "Just because I said no now Doctor, doesn't mean I mean forever! You keep an eye out for me! I want to see those stars!" She laughed and turned her back on them once more.

"I'll hold you to that, Daisy Trinder!"

"They make a cute couple." Rose smiled as her and the Doctor entered the TARDIS.

"One adventure I've never had. A life. One like that." The Doctor saddened for a moment.

"How comes she didn't lose her intelligence? Why didn't she burn, like the Picarion said?"

"Mainly scare tactics. I imagine she would lose some though. But there's still some left inside her."

"The alien's still in there?"

"Yes. Well. No. Not really. Just an echo. A footprint. A tiny wisp of gas, to hold that knowledge in there."

Rose nodded, and the Doctor hit a random sequence of buttons on the control panel. The TARIDS began its familiar noise.

"What did she mean? Remember your promise?"

The Doctor paused, and looked up from the monitor at Rose.

"I promised… I promised that if I got the Picarion out of her head, successfully, I would tell you what was on the psychic paper."

It was Rose's turn to pause. All three hearts in the room beat faster.

"Well?"

"Look."

He held out the psychic paper for her inspection. She took it from him, opened it, and read the contents.

Some moments later she threw her arms around him, her Doctor. They pulled apart slightly, to look into each other's eyes.

"Say it." She whispered, so quietly the Doctor felt the words rather than heard them.

"Rose Tyler. My Rose Tyler. I…"

"I love you too." She interrupted, softly pressing her lips against his, as the TARDIS flew into orbit and Daisy Trinder turned to look at the darkening sky, her hand in Jack's while she counted the stars and wondered which one she would want to go to first.


End file.
